domingo, 23 de marzo de 2014

Early on in her career, Deborah Margolin realized that she was a
woman nobody liked, not even herself. She was a “homely person who was
pregnant all the time”—not because she enjoyed sex, according to
Margolin, but because of a sense of self-loathing that led her toward
the same dead end, over and over again. She was married to a man but
wished that she were with a woman. Or, rather, she wished that she were a woman—a different one. She wished she were Patience or Sarah, two women whom everyone around her seemed to want.
Historical-fiction buffs might recognize the name Patience and Sarah
as a novel set in the 19th-century adapted for stage. Others might
recognize Deborah Margolin not as a bitter, perpetually expectant woman,
but as a playwright, an Obie-award winning performance artist, and an
associate professor in Yale University’s undergraduate theater studies
program.
But for Margolin, the line separating her real self from her stage
self became less defined the deeper into character she went. Playing a
person whose existence was blight on others’ took a real toll,
emotionally and physically, and possibly even affected how her peers
treated her. For many actors like Margolin who land demanding roles,
fully inhabiting the mind, mannerisms, and reality of a fictional
character can be as alienating as it is rewarding."My character was unattractive and somehow, so was I. Something about that infused the community of actors that I was in."“It
was depressing,” Margolin recalls. “My character would cry, and I would
cry. She was miserable, and I was miserable. She was a frustrated,
ignorant person trapped in a narrow life, and I felt like that.
Once, while I was onstage, my purse was robbed in the dressing room,
and I felt like everybody backed away from me, thinking that I would
infect them with tragedy. These were lovely people—I loved them
dearly—but my character was unattractive and somehow, so was I.
Something about that infused the community of theater actors that I was
in.”
The idea that there are psychological consequences to good acting has
been espoused so often that it’s easy to assume the science is there to
back it up. As a result, the sudden and often surprising deaths of
talented actors sometimes inspire fearful, knowing whispers about the
dangers of delving “too deep” into harrowing roles. Many theatergoers
have a sense that somewhere in the actor’s psyche lays the potential to
forget himself when authentically getting into character.
In truth, cognitive scientists and psychologists have been reluctant
to embrace acting as a serious subject of study. But researchers like
Thalia Goldstein, an assistant professor of psychology at Pace
University, have recently started to investigate the links between the
two fields with the idea that both disciplines can be enriched by a
study of their commonalities. In a joint paper from Goldstein and Yale
professor Paul Bloom, “The mind on stage: why cognitive scientists should study acting,” Goldstein argues that psychologists can look to how actors create emotions in order to understand human nature in a new way.
“I think that at their cores, psychology, cognitive science, and
theater are all trying to do the same thing, which is understand why
people do the things they do, our range of behavior, and where it comes
from,” Goldstein says. “It’s just two different ways of looking at the
same question.”
Goldstein believes that a principal barrier to such research is that
few people—scientists and average viewers alike—understand the work that
goes into acting and what it means to convincingly portray another
person onstage. She finds it helpful to first distinguish what acting is
from what it isn’t, and then determine the processes involved in
performing.
As a human invention, acting is hardly a hardwired part of our
biology, she notes. So while there’s no such thing as a “thespian
instinct” or an adaptation that makes good acting evolutionarily
advantageous, we can come closer to understanding why realistic acting
is so convincing by analyzing the cognitive capacities it draws upon.
Goldstein looks at three categories—pretense, lying, and acting—as
they fit into a trio of cognitive parameters. First, what is being
presented perceptually and if it is actually happening or is just
pretend; second, what behavior is being shown and whether that behavior
is a cue to reality; and finally, whether the exhibited behavior is
intended to fool the audience. On the first parameter, Goldstein says,
all three categories are in agreement. In the cases of pretense, lying,
and acting, “what is being presented perceptually, what we’re seeing, is
not real.”"Acting is a form of pretense that's done with more realistic behavior, and a form of lying that everyone is in on."In
the second parameter, there is some variation among the categories. “In
pretense, the behavior is a cue to the fact that what [someone] is
doing is not real. You’re smiling even though you say you’re sad, or
you’re not using a cup when you pretend to drink,” Goldstein explains.
“In deception and acting, though, the behavior [alone] is not a cue to
the fact that what you’re doing is not real.”
The final category is the trickiest of all: Are actors trying to make
people believe that what they’re doing is true? Well, yes and no.
Acting is not lying and neither is it pretense, but both flirt with what
is “true” or real to varying degrees.
“Everybody knows that when they’re watching CSI: Miami or playing tea party with a four year old that they’re watching television and not dining with the Queen,” Goldstein says. “But with lying, only the person who is lying understands what’s going on.”On
the categorical spectrum then, “acting is a form of pretense that’s
done with more realistic behavior, and a form of lying that everyone is
in on.”
But can a realistic scenario be overly convincing? In other words, is good acting a kind of Inception?
In the 2010 film, Dominick “Dom” Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) charges
architecture student Ariadne (Ellen Page) with the task of building the
most convincing possible dream world. However, Dom warns Ariadne of the
dangers of borrowing too heavily from her own life, telling her to “always imagine new places.”
“You’ve got to draw from stuff you know, right?” she counters, to
which Dom replies, “Building a dream from your memory is the easiest way
to lose grasp on what’s real and what is a dream.”
Similarly, actors must do real work—build real worlds—to temporarily
convince themselves and others of the veracity of unreal circumstances.
Yet they must be mindful of how much of their own lives and experiences
they imbue their characters with, something they only began to do a
handful of decades ago.
What we value as “realistic” acting is a relatively new and
particularly American way of depicting society. Taking into
consideration the arc of Western performance from highly-symbolic Greek
theater, to Laurence Olivier’s classic turn
as Hamlet in 1948, to pretty much any Meryl Streep role, ever, it
becomes evident that audiences’ demand to really believe what they are
seeing has been a gradual, modish progression.
The trend toward realism in acting emerged in the mid-20th century
due to the influence of Russian actor and director Constantin
Stanislavsky, who urged actors to strive for “believable truth.” As noted on PBS.org:

Stanislavsky first employed methods such as “emotional memory.” To
prepare for a role that involves fear, the actor must remember something
frightening, and attempt to act the part in the emotional space of that
fear they once felt. Stanislavsky believed that an actor needed to take
his or her own personality onto the stage when they began to play a
character. […] Later Stanislavsky concerned himself with the creation of
physical entries into these emotional states, believing that the
repetition of certain acts and exercises could bridge the gap between
life on and off the stage.

"You might subconsciously be colored by real pain, but your imagination could bring up something else."Subsequently,
heavily influenced by Stanislavsky, actor and director Lee Strasberg
interpreted his teacher’s philosophy for an American audience and
emphasized affective memory—a key component of what is touted as method
acting, or simply, the Method. As noted by Pamela Moller Kareman, the
executive director of the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre
in New York City, the field was forever changed.
“Beginning way back with their interpretation of Stanislavsky,
Americans have had a tremendous influence on the art of acting,
internationally. What people [once] thought of as American acting is just acting today,” she says.
“Unfortunately, audiences have become a little impatient with
stylized acting and now won’t even watch a black-and-white film because
they think it’s boring, whereas it was stylized but very truthful. Take
somebody like Quentin Tarantino—his are highly stylized films, and yet you still believe the behavior in them. It might be heightened, but it’s truthful.”Neighborhood
Playhouse teaches its students according to the principles of the
Meisner Technique, an offshoot of Stanislavsky’s work developed by
Sanford Meisner—a one-time friend and contemporary of Lee Strasberg.
According to Kareman, the divide between the pair was that Strasberg was
much more interested in actors working from their real lives and real
pain, whereas Meisner thought that was “psychotherapy and had no place
in acting.”
“Meisner thought that the biggest gift an actor has is his or her
imagination, which is limitless, while one’s real life and real
experiences were quite limited,” Kareman says.
“He also felt, and I agree with him, that you wouldn’t be able to go
[to certain real-life experiences]. So, if you were ever in any way
molested as a child, he never wanted you to use that; it would be a very
unhealthy thing. You might subconsciously be colored by that, but your
imagination could bring up something else.”
Deborah Margolin also discourages the possible romanticizing of
traumatic experiences for art saying, “I’ve gone to dark places in terms
of the roles I’ve played, and I’ve also gone to dark places just
living. There’s this whole thing about suffering for your art and I
think that’s baloney. I tell my students not to worry about the
suffering. Suffering will find you—seek the joy.”
Either way, deciding whether or not to design roles around personal
experiences isn’t the all-or-nothing decision that it is for Dom Cobb.
Many actors create their own methods, with some mix of immersion and
personal history, while others include no trace of their lives. As
Professor Goldstein sees it, though, either choice may result in some
subtle effect on a performer.

Related Story

The Dark Psychology of Being a Good ComedianShe cites research from late Yale professor Susan Nolen-Hoeksema on the effect of ‘ruminating’ on negative events, which has been shown to “consistently predict the onset of depression” in those who engage in it, particularly women.
To actors who might laugh that off and present acting as being purely
physical, Goldstein says other research in psychology suggests that
they, too, might experience emotional aftereffects from performing. She
points to findings from Harvard social psychologist Amy Cuddy, who has
said that just putting yourself into an assertive position, a “power
pose,” like sitting in a chair with your chest puffed out, not only
affects the way that you feel, but actually changes hormonal levels, with stress cortisol decreasing and testosterone increasing.
Goldstein admits that current research doesn’t look at these
behaviors in the context of acting but says, “there’s a sense that if
actors are really diving into themselves, maybe they’re having some ill
effects.”
For some professionals in the field, those “ill effects” can be
attributed to finding glitches within their own lives, as well as in the
difficulty of performing itself. Deborah Margolin evocatively compares
the lasting impression that acting leaves upon her to the scar left on
an ovary post-ovulation.“The egg is not
there, but it leaves a mark of having burst forth,” she says. “It may
sound arcane but I feel, in this fertile way, scarred, informed, freed,
and changed by every role I’ve ever played.”
And in an interview with Indiewire,
Tony Greco, a veteran acting teacher who counted Philip Seymour Hoffman
among his students, explained that the personal introspective work
needed to mine the minds of complicated characters is what ensnares
actors who push themselves. Speaking about his experiences with Hoffman
and others he said:

When Phil came to me with a great role, nothing was off limits. I
could talk to Phil about any part of himself. Any aspect of his life.
His love of the role was so big, his wanting to get to the truth of the
part, that he was willing to journey to very complicated places. I have
another student who I’ve known as long as Phil, Nicole Ari Parker, and
she just did ‘Streetcar Named Desire’ on Broadway. And you can imagine
that if you decide to take on Blanche DuBois, when the play is done you
don’t go home and not think about all the questions that these great
roles bring up inside of you. If you really decide to go where these
great roles will take you, then you come out of them a changed person.
You come out of them different because … when an audience sees a great
role, it should make them question their own lives. And when an actor
takes on a great role, it should make them question their lives. They
change.

Deborah Moller Kareman says she agrees. “In life we have a lot of
facades—and we need them because we can’t be as vulnerable, and
penetrable, and open in life as we must be onstage or in front of a
camera. In art you have to be responsive. Things have to get in so that
they can get out, and you can’t live the way you do your art or you’d be
wounded every second.”
Nevertheless, she breezily noted that “most actors live very normal
lives”—very well aware of who they are after a role has ended, even if
they might tell the people around them, “That one took a lot out of me.”
She is also keen to add nuance to ideas like Greco’s about “great
actors” and difficult roles."Intensity gets
misinterpreted. Not all acting is necessarily extremely intense. But it
is concentrated and very much about being here, now."To the
Neighborhood Playhouse executive, distinguishing between intensity and
concentration more accurately explains the emotional and psychological
travails of acting—as well as acknowledges the wide range of work that
an actor might do in her lifetime, from playing Cashier Number Three to
Leading Lady.
“Intensity gets misinterpreted because I don’t think that all acting
is necessarily extremely intense,” says Kareman. “But it is concentrated
and very much about being here, now.”
For example, consider the “teeny-tiny gal in the train station”—your
standard behind-the-scenes extra—who is in the background of Grand
Central Station away from the crux of the action. According to Kareman,
the extra needs to be just as concentrated as the leading actors,
“otherwise she’s just pretending to be in the train station.” (Or as
Goldstein might put it, she is too engaged in pretense.)
“If she’s really in the train station she’ll be concentrated; and if
her newspaper falls, she’ll pick it up,” Kareman says. “But if she’s not
concentrated then she won’t pick it up—then all of a sudden they’ve got
to stop the scene and say, ‘What was that? You dropped the paper and
didn’t pick it up.’” And that’s just bad acting.
“You do lose yourself in an artistic way,” Kareman explains, “but
less so”—and less dramatically, perhaps—“than the layman might think.”
Indeed, one of the ways that she, Deborah Margolin, and others in the
profession insulate themselves from their own work is by disengaging
from their heightened level of concentration just as doggedly as they
build it up. Naomi Lorrain, a student in the MFA Graduate Acting Program
at NYU Tisch School of the Arts mentioned the importance of safe
spaces, explaining that for her, school is a safe space to do the unsafe
things that are required in acting.“I can’t do a
really intense role and then snap out of it. Mine is a slower
progression out of a character, but I’m learning a lot of physical
things that help me shake it off,” Lorrain says. “I’ve learned to
develop a ritual, whether a vocal exercise or yoga, to bring me back to
my center.”
Aside from creating a routine to reconnect with herself, Lorrain
added that reconnecting with people she trusts also crucial. “I think
having an outside support system is essential for this work. I might be
going crazy and losing myself in a character’s rage, or sexuality, or
fear, and vulnerability—and then I go home and my fiancé Rodney’s there,
or I talk to my mom or my best friends. They know who I was before this
character and they just remind me of home,” she says. “It can be hard.
Offstage, you have to remember that it’s pretend and onstage you have to
forget.”

In 2008, Estelle Parsons took over the notoriously
demanding role of pill-popping, bile-spewing matriarch Violet Weston in
the Broadway production of Tracy Letts’s Pulitzer winner, August: Osage County.
Along with the raves came wide-eyed write-ups about the 82-year-old’s
workout regimen (yoga, swimming, bicycling, running). Now the Oscar
winner (Bonnie and Clyde), onetime Roseanne mom and longtime theater vet stars in the touring production of August, which has its homecoming this week.You’ve said people identify Violet with their own mothers: “I
do, even though my mother didn’t take drugs.” Violet’s such a nasty
mom—how is she like yours?In a mother-daughter
relationship, there’s competitiveness and disappointment. I’ve been a
successful actress and she didn’t need to be disappointed in me, God
knows, but she was disappointed in me and everyone.Why was she disappointed in you?I married the
wrong guy…. Her diary said—I was four years old—“Estelle broke a chair
today, I’ll have to speak to her father.” So that gave me a little
glimpse that I wasn’t the easiest kid.I don’t think breaking a chair’s such a terrible thing for a four-year-old.You don’t? No, but she did. [Laughs]The play looks at generational repetition. Your daughter
Abbie wrote an article about you a couple of years ago. What’d you think
of it?I don’t like it when people write about me. I don’t
like to think about myself, I don’t like other people to think about
me—which I know is crazy. I don’t find life very easy, I just find it
painful.Painful? How so?It’s just, I’m never without thinking life is kind of sad and awful.No wonder you play Violet so well.[Laughs] Maybe. I’ve never understood why anybody would think I’m right in this part.Abbie wrote that you were known as the Queen around the house.Oh,
I don’t know what that means. But probably it’s true, huh? It’s hard, I
was a single parent. I don’t recommend it ever to anybody. I got
divorced when they were two.So Mom was right about your first husband, Richard Gehman, after all?I
wouldn’t say my mom was right, but that was a terrible marriage. He was
a terrific writer; he was legendary in New York. I do have to give him
credit because when I didn’t want to be on The Today Show anymore, he said, “Why don’t you go on stage? You’re always talking about doing that.”How were the early years on Today?Great
pioneer days. I was one of eight people who put it together. Then I was
the first woman sent out to do political reporting for a network. The
early ’50s.Have you found your inner Violet?Sure. I was brought up to be a good girl. Now I realize how awful I am [Laughs] when I am awful. I’ll say something nasty to a waiter and then I’ll say, “Oh, Lord, that’s Violet peeping out, isn’t it?”Does she peep out around family?I had a little
episode, yes. My grandson [Eben Britton] is in the NFL, and he was
talking to us about football. Someone asked a question to Eben and his
mother answered it, and I said, “Oh, shut up, Abbie!” She flounced out
of the room, and I had to go apologize. I was quite shocked at myself.Abbie again.She’s a feisty piece.She also wrote, “People who work with [Estelle] have been
terrified of her, myself included. There’s no room for halfway in
Estelle’s creative world.” Fair?Very fair. I try to bring a
playwright’s work to life. A lot of actors are interested in bringing
themselves to great careers. I guess I’m contemptuous of everybody who
doesn’t work as hard as I do.You must have a lot of contempt.I haven’t been easy to get along with. I hope I’m getting better at an advanced age. [Laughs]
I was so angry at most of the cast when we started this tour. It was a
great revelation that, though it didn’t look like they were caring so
much, they’ve become superb. I couldn’t be more proud. So I’ve lost my
contempt, which is a very good thing.Did they sense your contempt?Well, probably. I
tried to stay by myself, but sometimes I’d say bad things to them.
They’re used to me, I suppose. I don’t know what they think of me. Maybe
you should ask them. [Laughs]
August: Osage County plays the Cadillac Palace Theatre Tuesday 2–February 14.